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On his lunch break, he went out the employees’ door on the side. Snow no longer fell, and he could still see his own tracks leading from his car, but when he went into the alley, there were no footprints leading away from the truck.
“Hello,” he said, approaching the cab. He knocked on the door, then climbed the chrome steps and tried the door handle. The door swung open. “Hello?” Still no answer, so he poked his head in and scanned the entire cab without seeing any sign of the driver. As he jumped down, a gust of wind blew under his coat, making him shiver, and the chill sank into his bones.
For the rest of his shift, Bryce worked with extra zeal. He and his coworkers emptied the trailer half an hour earlier than usual. Bryce left his coworkers congratulating each other and hurried outside to talk to the driver, but the truck was locked and empty. On a note of stubborn curiosity, Bryce decided to stick around. He had paced the length of the trailer when the truck started. Bryce whirled around and ran back to the cab. The same scowling visage looked down at him as the truck pulled away.
The only footprints in the snow were his own.
More curious than ever, Bryce hurried to his car, wiped snow off the windows with his sleeve and his bare hands, hopped in and raced across the length of the parking lot, making it to the street in time to see the truck turning right onto the street in front of him. Home was in the other direction, but he followed the truck, staying a couple of vehicles back.
The huge cartoon snowman waved good-bye from the billboard at the edge of town, but Bryce didn’t even glance at it. He knew the sign read, “Leaving Winterland, Pop. 10,000,” because he saw it every time he visited a friend in the suburbs or went skiing, just as he knew the next sign read, “Glacier Peak Ski Resort, 5 km.”
A fat snowflake swirled out of the darkness into his headlights and right at his face, shattering and melting on the windshield. The wipers swept it aside, but more flakes came, thicker and faster. By the time he passed the ski resort, the wipers could barely keep up. Over an inch of unplowed snow now covered the highway, except for the tracks of the truck ahead. He turned up the heater to full blast to fight the chill.
The rear end lost traction for an instant, and he eased up ever so slightly on the gas pedal. He wanted to stay close while avoiding the turbulence behind the trailer, but all he saw now was the red glow of the taillights slowly pulling away. With grim determination, he eased down on the gas, but the car started to fishtail again, forcing him to slow down.
The red glow vanished completely behind the trees as the truck went around a long corner. Bryce cursed under his breath but dared not go any faster, and by the time his car rounded the corner, there was no sign of the truck, not even any tracks in the two inches of fresh snow, so flat and featureless he had trouble seeing where the road went. He shifted down a gear.
Trees loomed in the headlights, and he hit the brakes, skidding to a stop on the shoulder. He jumped out of the car to take a closer look, not even bothering to close the door. The road simply ended. Evergreen trees, clothed in white cones of snow, stood tall in every direction except the way he had come.
He shivered and got back in the car.
The next morning he got up late, turned up the thermostat a couple of degrees, and watched an ice hockey game on TV, then picked up Misty from school and played the “Snow Escape” board game with her until his wife, Winter, came home with a frozen pizza for supper. As soon as the babysitter showed up after supper, they picked up their neighbors, Crystal and Cole Dayman, to go curling.
After the game, in the clubhouse over his bottle of ice-filtered beer, Cole commented, “You played even worse than usual today, Bryce. Where’s your head at?”
“Yeah,” Winter said. “It’s like you’re not even here. I bet you can’t even tell us the score, or what you had for supper.”
About Rik Hunik
